Clean eating
Cava’s falafel fix
Good morning, pita pioneers. This is your Stock Market Rundown for September 3rd, 2024. Thank you once again for joining me. Let’s take a bite:
TODAY’S TOP STORY: CAVA’S CULINARY CLOUT
Ah, lunch hour at the office. Time to head to the food court and grab a bacon cheeseburger and some fries, right? Great idea if you want to be dozing at your desk by 3 PM—and buying a bigger pants size in a few months.
The modern office worker craves clean eating—a meal that leaves you with unclogged arteries, and a shirtfront with no grease stains. That’s why every fast casual brand from Chipotle to Sweetgreen is going healthy.
The latest booming chain is Cava, a fast-casual restaurant that serves up bowls, pitas, and wraps, with options from lamb meatballs to falafel. (Tip: skip the garlic dressing if you have a client meeting after lunch… it’s pungent.)
Based in Washington, DC, Cava went public in 2023 at a valuation of over $2 billion, with aspirations to expand from 300 locations, to over 1,000.
The CEO, Brett Schulman, didn’t grow up in the restaurant industry—he was actually a career investment banker. But he bailed on the corporate world to run a snack company with his wife.
That gave Schulman the know-how for his next opportunity: selling Mediterranean-style food to middle America, by partnering up with a trio of Greek-American restaurateurs. (They brought the recipes—Schulman brought the spreadsheets.)
Apparently, we’re all eager to chow down on hummus and tahini, because Cava’s stock price surged to a record high after a recent earnings report showed strong sales momentum. Cava is proving that you can have your tzatziki and eat it too—without worrying about popping a button after lunch.
SO WHAT ELSE IS GOING ON?
Fewer jobs, same new-car smell. GM is laying off 1,000 employees to hit cost-cutting targets.
Watching the Olympics was fun, but let’s face it: Americans’ real favorite sport is shopping. Discount retailer TJX beat expectations and raised its annual profit forecast as shoppers clamored for clothes off the cluttered racks.
Looking for a new job? Why not apply to be CEO of Disney? The company is looking for a successor for Bob Iger. The ideal candidate will be as clever as Deadpool, with the cost-cutting skills of Scrooge McDuck.
RealPage, which is owned by private equity company Thoma Bravo, is being sued for allowing landlords to collude to raise prices on renters. And I thought it was bad when my landlord docked my security deposit just because my cat chewed through the washing machine’s power cord.
That’s it for today, my friends; tune in for more later this week. Yours in capitalism, The Axe
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